h as his grandmother had taught him, operating upon the
necessities of a simple and earnest nature. Reality, however lapt in
vanity, or even in falsehood, cannot lose its power. It is--the other is
not. She had taught him to look up--that there was a God. He would put
it to the test. Not that he doubted it yet: he only doubted whether
there was a hearing God. But was not that worse? It was, I think. For it
is of far more consequence what kind of a God, than whether a God or no.
Let not my reader suppose I think it possible there could be other than
a perfect God--perfect--even to the vision of his creatures, the faith
that supplies the lack of vision being yet faithful to that vision. I
speak from Robert's point of outlook. But, indeed, whether better or
worse is no great matter, so long as he would see it or what there was.
He had no comfort, and, without reasoning about it, he felt that life
ought to have comfort--from which point he began to conclude that the
only thing left was to try whether the God in whom his grandmother
believed might not help him. If the God would but hear him, it was all
he had yet learned to require of his Godhood. And that must ever be the
first thing to require. More demands would come, and greater answers he
would find. But now--if God would but hear him! If he spoke to him but
one kind word, it would be the very soul of comfort; he could no more
be lonely. A fountain of glad imaginations gushed up in his heart at the
thought. What if, from the cold winter of his life, he had but to open
the door of his garret-room, and, kneeling by the bare bedstead, enter
into the summer of God's presence! What if God spoke to him face to
face! He had so spoken to Moses. He sought him from no fear of the
future, but from present desolation; and if God came near to him, it
would not be with storm and tempest, but with the voice of a friend.
And surely, if there was a God at all, that is, not a power greater than
man, but a power by whose power man was, he must hear the voice of the
creature whom he had made, a voice that came crying out of the very need
which he had created. Younger people than Robert are capable of
such divine metaphysics. Hence he continued to disappear from his
grandmother's parlour at much the same hour as before. In the cold,
desolate garret, he knelt and cried out into that which lay beyond the
thought that cried, the unknowable infinite, after the God that may be
known as surely as a